Authorized Leave
by Kenuck
Summary: Jennifer Jareau rarely got sick. [Criminal Minds&House crossover]


**Title**: Authorized Leave  
** Author**: Kenuck  
** Fandom**: Criminal Minds/House, M.D.  
** Characters**: Jennifer Jareau, Gregory House.  
** Spoilers**: General season two of Criminal Minds; general season three of House.  
** Prompt**: Jennifer Jareau (JJ) / Dr. Gregory House / just breathe (from goddess-loki's Almost Totally Random Pairing Generator)  
** Rating**: K  
** Warning**: None.  
** Disclaimer**: "Authorized Leave" is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

**Author's Note**: This is un-beta'd, so it's probably riddled with mistakes. It's also the first one-shot I've written since my muse decided to die last November. You've been warned.

* * *

Jennifer Jareau rarely got sick. In her five years with the agency, she had called in sick a grand total of nine days. If a stomach flu or viral bug was going around the workplace, it would plague her co-workers, but manage to skip her. 

This time, she didn't seem to be so lucky. She had only been in New Jersey for eight hours and already she was familiarizing herself with the interior of examination room two in Princeton Plainsboro's clinic. The nurse had ushered her into the small room and left the file containing her health insurance and visitor forms on the counter by the door.

Aaron Hotchner had caught her nonchalantly wiping her nose at a scene and suppressing sneezes on the plane. (Emily had jokingly warned her that she was killing brain cells by forcing back the reflex, and Reid had added that a sneeze could travel up to 100 miles per hour.) If Hotch had noticed that, he certainly would have noticed that she had switched from her usual French vanilla coffee to green tea with honey.

He had.

While she was sorting through faxes from Garcia at police headquarters, Hotch had cornered her. He persuaded her to go to the local hospital to be checked out by a doctor, telling her that he couldn't afford to see her work herself into the ground and increase her chance of becoming twice as ill.

So here she was, sitting in examination room two, waiting on a doctor to assess her situation. If she were lucky, the doctor would assure her that she—no, Hotch—was overreacting and send her back to work. The local news outlets were probably waiting on information for their evening editions and JJ was sure that the files, the new cases, and e-mails were piling up back at Quantico—God, she was getting a headache just thinking about it.

The door to the room opened and a lanky frame limped in. JJ saw an unshaven face, omniscient blue eyes, and casual attire consisting of a pair of jeans, a button-down shirt and a dark sport jacket. Was this the doctor, or another patient who had accidentally entered the wrong room?

She watched the man glance over at her and then close the door. He was the doctor. Her eyes drifted down to the cane he used as he hobbled over to the counter where her file lay waiting to be read. He leaned the cane against the cabinet and flipped open the file, scanning through it at about the same speed JJ had seen Reid read the newspaper front-to-back.

He turned and, with the assistance of his trusty cane, hitched over to the lone stool by the exam table. "Hi. I'm Dr. House. I'll be your physician for the next"—he checked his watch—"three minutes and forty-seven seconds. _Go._"

JJ paused, uncertain as to whether or not this was a joke. He couldn't possibly be a doctor. And if, by some chance that he was, he had the most bizarre sense of humour (was it humour?) she had encountered in a long time.

"My boss sent me here," said JJ. "I've been feeling a little under the weather lately. Sore muscles, coughing, runny nose, headaches, chills... It's probably just a flu bug. I rarely get sick, but when I do, it tends to be in the winter." As if to emphasize her point, she cast her gaze toward the window where white snowflakes swirled around in the cold January wind.

"Your boss sent you here. Hmm. What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a media liaison," she said, adding: "I work with the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Unit in Quantico."

"Quantico, Virginia?" he asked. She nodded. "What are you doing all the way out of Kansas, Dorothy?"

"The profiling team was called out for a serial arson case in Trenton," JJ replied. "A local cop suggested I come here because the wait time is shorter."

"Smart cop." House eyed her suspiciously. "You wouldn't happen to have crossed paths with anyone by the name of Tritter, would you?"

Her brow furrowed. "No... Why?"

"Routine question," he said, insouciantly. "I ask all law enforcement and letter agency employees when they come in."

JJ nodded, her lips pursed. This Dr. House character was different—whether in a good or bad sense, she was undecided.

Her ringing Blackberry made her jump. She grabbed her winter jacket and frantically searched through the pockets for the device. Having located it in the right pocket, she whipped it out and answered with an exasperated, "Jareau."

Dr. House, in the meantime, spun his cane around between his fingers like a pageant contestant twirls a baton. He was hardly amused.

"Yes, Hotch. I'm in the clinic. Princeton Plainsboro." She paused and listened to the voice on the other end. "I'm with the doctor right now—"

House leaned over and snatched the phone from her. "Yes, she's with the doctor right now and the doctor isn't being paid to watch his patient gab on the phone."

JJ sat, her coat lying haphazardly over her lap, stunned at Dr. House's audacity.

"Hasta la vista." House clicked off and tossed the Blackberry back at JJ.

She caught it and stared down at it, nonplussed by what had just happened.

"You were listing symptoms you were experiencing. Are there any you left out?"

"Diarrhea," she said, slightly wincing at the disclosure of such personal information. "But it's common. The team travels a lot, we stay in over a hundred hotels, and because we're constantly on the go, we don't exactly have the time to eat right."

"You don't have the flu," House said, and limped back over to her file.

Again, JJ was confused. But the prospect of returning to the investigation lingered. "So I can go back to work...?"

He scribbled something on a piece of paper. "No. I'm admitting you."

_"What?"_

"Have you recently worked with animals? Maybe you visited a scene where a psychopath took a weed whacker to his cat lady neighbour?"

JJ thought for a moment and suddenly remembered a string of murders in San Diego that had brought the BAU team to Marjorie Kent's knick-knack- and cat-infested home. Cat feces and urine, added to the already-unbearable stench of a two-week decomposition of the victim, had sent several patrol officers and local detectives reeling out the front door and into the bushes to vomit. Even she had choked back, but pressed on for the benefit of the investigation.

"Yes, there was a case in San Diego where a victim hadn't been discovered for two weeks. She had eighteen cats...but what do animals have to do with why I'm sick?"

"It's highly likely that you have leptospirosis," said House. "It's a rare medical condition contracted from animal urine. You were probably exposed to it at that scene. It's a good thing your boss sent you; another week or so, and you would've been dead."

JJ's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh, my God."

"Relax. It's treatable. But you're going to have to shut off that thing"—House pointed to the Blackberry in her hand—"so you can get some rest and, you know, breathe?"

"How long are we looking at, here? A couple of days?"

"Possibly. I'll have my department team run a few tests. You could be here for a couple of days or a couple of weeks, but it looks like we caught it early enough. You should be out of here in a couple days." He picked up the phone and dialled a number. "Cameron, I need you to come down to the clinic. I have a patient I'm admitting for leptospirosis..."


End file.
